


Desert in My Mouth

by lunabee34 (Lorraine)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Belonging, Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Home, Starting Over, Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-16 18:08:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1357030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorraine/pseuds/lunabee34
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After joining the Atlantis expedition, Ronon reclaims his voice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Desert in My Mouth

In his time as a Runner, Ronon changed in many ways but the change he hates most is his silence. The ruthlessness of his body—his sharpened senses, his higher pain threshold, the force of his will—this difference pleases him. Ronon is a weapon now, lethal in a way he never imagined even in those last desperate days under Kel’s command. His body gives him purpose and he is grateful to once more have a greater goal than merely remaining alive. However, this advantage will never outweigh what he has lost. 

When Ronon first began Running, he spoke often—to himself, to his memories of Melena and Kel, to the Wraith. He chanted the names of the dead as he Ran, until he could make no more sound, until his throat burned. He begged the Ancestors to grant them safe passage to the stars and felt no comfort in the prayers, only despair. As the years passed, Ronon spoke less and less until finally words were painful in his mouth, foreign and unwanted.

Now, running alongside Sheppard through the deeps of Atlantis, Ronon decides that of all the things the Wraith have taken, his voice is one that he can reclaim.

@@@

Ronon begins greeting everyone he meets—nurses in the infirmary, the woman ladling stew into bowls in the mess, Lorne, Zelenka, Weir—and they stammer hellos in return. They look at him with undisguised curiosity or suspicion or fear and Ronon can’t help but feel a bizarre mixture of humiliation and amusement when they do. 

He is a cipher to these people, he knows, because he is so quiet. They can’t read the body like he can. McKay’s posture doesn’t reveal his insecurity to them as it does to Ronon. Teyla’s calm grace often masks a sharp irritation that Ronon knows only he notices. The people of Earth listen and listen well, but they do not _see_. And so they don’t understand why Ronon would talk to them or what it is he truly means when he says, “Good morning.” 

He wonders what they would think of him if they saw him as he once was, in a white _ormech_ buttoned high on his throat and his brown vest fastened tightly over that. If they had been there when the priest bound his right wrist to Melena’s left, Ronon reciting both their lineages back to the Year of the Three Comets before singing the pledge. He thinks these people would like that man far more than the one who eats with his hands. Ronon does.

@@@

Teyla is easy to talk to. She never hurries him. She never interrupts. She never shames him when he can’t find the words.

“I like potatoes,” Ronon says to her. “Kinda like _grekh_ but not as sweet,” and she nods gravely as if he has said something of the greatest importance. 

Or, “How do you think Sheppard makes his hair do that?” and she surprises him by launching into speculation that proves all of Atlantis is secretly interested in the answer to that question.

@@@

Ronon quickly learns that no subject is taboo with McKay. “Who would you rather fuck?” Ronon says. “Miko or Novak?”

“Hmmm,” McKay says, his fingers stilling on the keyboard. “I have a sneaking suspicion that Novak’s an expert on more than Asgard technology so I’ll go with Miko. She’d probably be pathetically grateful anyway and wake me up with blow jobs.”

Ronon laughs and it feels good in his chest, this sound he has long had little reason to make. “Zelenka or Beckett?”

“Oh, please. Like I’d let Carson anywhere near my ass. Have you seen the calendar with the sheep?”

@@@

Sheppard is the challenge. He jokes; he makes polite conversation; and he says next to nothing of consequence. Certainly nothing that Ronon would call personally revealing. Sheppard is easy to talk to, but difficult to talk _with_. On Sateda, Kel would have shackled Ronon in the Pit for the kind of digging Ronon’s been doing into Sheppard’s past, but this is not Sateda and Sheppard doesn’t even notice.

“My father was disappointed in me,” Ronon says and Sheppard grunts and knocks Ronon’s legs out from under him with Teyla’s sticks. 

Ronon says, “I once defied Kel in a training exercise and he banished me to the _llyneal_ fields for a month. I still have the thorn scars on my wrists.” Sheppard raises an eyebrow and shoots three rounds into the crotch of a target with Kolya's name written across the chest in black ink.

“My home is gone,” Ronon says and Sheppard looks at him, really looks at him in a way he never has before. _Finally,_ Ronon thinks. _Finally_.

“It doesn’t have to be,” Sheppard says. “These people, this place. I never really had a home until I stepped through that Gate.”

“Maybe. Yeah,” Ronon says and Sheppard smiles as he brings up the jumper’s HUD. They fly the rest of the way to the mainland in silence and Ronon thinks this sort of quiet is again the kind he can embrace.


End file.
